Google Project Fi: ‘Nexus’ Of Wireless Services Is Here

Google has just put its foot in another key mobile area. It has just earned itself a badge of a service provider in United States. Although, this is a surprising move from Google, it’s barely doing anything new, to be honest. Google Project Fi is a cellular service just like your T-Mo, AT&T or Verizon. Or to be precise it has become an MVNO like Cricket. But, instead of relying on just one carrier, it uses two of them, the number which Google hopes to increase in the future. It also adds WiFi for calling and texts to make your experience seamless.

It works like a charm

US carriers like T-Mobile already offers WiFi calls where regular coverage isn’t available. Google’s Fi uses exactly the same concept. For the cellular 4G LTE, Fi will rely on Sprint and T-Mobile’s networks. So, out of the three options it will use the best available. Google says it’s similar to its Nexus project of phones. As of now, Fi will work only on Google Nexus 6 as it is the only device to have the special kind of hardware and software to support Fi. T-Mobile and Sprint both have different kind of network infra. Moreover, Fi will put your number in the cloud so you can use it for calling from any OS or device that supports Google Hangouts.

It’s cheap and disruptive

Google Fi’ of course has its service plan and there’s just one simple plan. The Fi Basics plan comes for $20 and fetches you unlimited domestic calls and texts, unlimited international texts, low-cost international calls, WiFi tethering and coverage in 120+ countries. So you have noted it doesn’t have data, right? Google is offering data for a price which many may not like. It will charge you steep $10/GB; so you’ll pay $30 for 3GB. This gentleman got pissed up by Google’s offering.

But, in return Google is offering a killer, disruptive feature. You’ll pay for what you use. For the unused data, say 1GB of 3GB is unused, you’ll get credit for it at $1/100MB rate, i.e., the full value of unused data. The only generous service provider in the States is T-Mobile right now, but Google Fi goes a few steps further.

You can use it right away if…

Yes, you can, provided you’ve a Nexus 6 as your phone and you live in one of the areas supported by Fi. If you meet these two conditions, you can request an invite to join Fi. Check out Google Fi’s coverage map here and request an invite here.

People seem to be very much impressed with Google’s new move. There are a lot of people who are apparently ready to ditch their existing carriers and hop onto Google Fi. It looks like Google will one day give a tough fight to its carrier partner from its purchasing network bandwidth while it reduces your monthly bill.